Real Deal

Mad Decent Block PartyAug. 2 at Merriweather Post Pavilion

By Joe Warminsky •
May 17, 2013

“Dance music is so interchangeable. There’s not a lot of face to it. It’s a bunch of Dutch DJs with the same haircut. You go see a dance stage at a fucking dance festival and I’m bored out of my fucking mind. That’s not going to last very much longer, because kids see that it’s the same shit every single time,” Mad Decent label head Diplo told the Huffington Post last month during Coachella. Keep that quote in mind, dear consumer, if you buy a ticket to this year’s Mad Decent Block Party, which is, yeah, a dance-music festival. So far the announced headliners for the D.C. version include Diplo’s own dancehall-fueled group Major Lazer, the James Franco-baiting rapper Riff Raff, the London beat-pushers SBTRKT (with a DJ set), and Canadian dubstep-oriented duo Zeds Dead. If none of those names mean anything to you, consider this other Diplo quote: “We don’t make music for old people who have built-in expectations.” That explains Riff Raff, at least.